Summary of the day in corruption

The Charbonneau commission and fallout poses an ongoing challenge to collect and orchestrate all the links in logical order.

Gilles Surprenant continued testifying at the commission Monday (TVA link, plays video), naming other people at city hall who took bribes, including some on the executive committee. Surprenant also said he golfed with Vito Rizzuto and received many lavish bribes as part of a system that allegedly inflated the cost of city contracts over many years.

In the middle of this, a report on Jacques Bergeron came down from Quebec saying the city’s auditor-general had failed to stringently follow rules over awarding contracts, although this story does not directly link him up to the ongoing corruption epic.

Union Montreal made a point of bringing up party financing reforms at Monday night’s drama-plagued city council meeting. (A pertinent comment on the CBC item: “There’s not a horse left in the barn and Union Montreal wants to put on a new door.”) Projet Montréal councillors left the hall before these discussions, Richard Bergeron saying the notion of the other two parties talking ethics was a sham.